Me-Before-You-by-Jojo-Moyes

In the afternoon, there was a knock at the back door. I hurried down the
corridor, my hands still wet from washing up, and opened it to find a man
standing there in a dark suit, a briefcase in hand.
‘Oh no. We’re Buddhist,’ I said firmly, closing the door as the man began to
protest.
Two weeks previously a pair of Jehovah’s Witnesses had kept Will captive at
the back door for almost fifteen minutes, while he struggled to reverse his chair
back over the dislodged doormat. When I finally shut the door they had opened
the letter box to call that ‘he more than anyone’ should understand what it was to
look forward to the afterlife.
‘Um … I’m here to see Mr Traynor?’ the man said, and I opened the door
cautiously. In all my time at Granta House nobody had ever come to see Will via
the back door.
‘Let him in,’ Will said, appearing behind me. ‘I asked him to come.’ When I
still stood there, he added, ‘It’s okay, Clark … he’s a friend.’
The man stepped over the threshold, held out his hand and shook mine.
‘Michael Lawler,’ he said.
He was about to say something else, but Will moved his chair between us,
effectively cutting off any further conversation.
‘We’ll be in the living room. Could you make some coffee, then leave us for a
while?’
‘Um … okay.’
Mr Lawler smiled at me, a little awkwardly, and followed Will into the living
room. When I walked in with a tray of coffee some minutes later they were
discussing cricket. The conversation about legs and runs continued until I had no
further reason to lurk.
Brushing invisible dust from my skirt, I straightened up and said, ‘Well. I’ll
leave you to it.’
‘Thanks, Louisa.’
‘You sure you don’t want anything else? Biscuits?’
‘Thank you, Louisa.’
Will never called me Louisa. And he had never banished me from anything
before.